ahh
~$ which cat
tacis a cat but faced the other wayohhh let me check it out lol
man whichBat is my favorite command to date.
~$ which bat ~$ bat manman bat | bat
tac
I’ve always wondered what a good use case for tac would be…
Reverse chronological order, mostly
tac log.txt |head # would give you newest first
no good for sort because sort already supports -r
no need it for tail on large files because tail already skips to the end.
I do a lot of impromptu bash to sus crap out of logs.
when you’re balls deep in
cat log|grep -v foo| rev|cut -f 1-3 -d \ | |rev
Sometimes tac comes in clutch.
That’s fair. I’d usually just use less and drop to the end. My use cases would always need the older log before a newer log though because that’s the start of the problem. At least that’s how I operate.
For the past 30 years or so, my brain always tells me to type “last” instead of “tail”. This usually results in some kind of “Permission denied” message that confuses me for a few seconds.
there’s a last command? just knowing that.
Yes, but it shows information about recent/current logins and requires access a file called wtmp (or something like that, off the top of my head), and that requires privileged access.
My usual use case where I mix it up is looking at a log file and and I just want to see the last few entries. So my brain 🧠 tells my fingers to type “last logfile”, and when I get the permission message it tells my mouth to go, “Doh!”.
yeah I looked it up
this will be handy
~$ last reboot ~$ last -s -7days
I was today’s years old to finally notice the cat-head-tail thing…
But it also just recently dawned upon me why pacman has those weird “c” as progress indicators…
I’m not a smart man…
whereis cat?
which catwhatis cat?
man catlocate cat
strace cat
rtfm
Be careful now, 2000/2010 Linux terminology can be taken as an insult in 2026. /s
I’m tired of this stupid coddling bullshit with the influx of new Linux users. If you can’t read don’t use Linux. Simple. 😂
But wheres the manual??
In order of approachability:
Man pages.
Also Arch Wiki.
Also excellent books by NoStarch Press.
… Or did I miss a joke? Hehe
Missing the joke is always worthy as it’s own joke.
